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Friday Fess Up

Earlier this week…

“Hey, Mom. Let’s write a story together,” Ruby said. See the above photo.

Okay.

“It’ll be about a hotdog and a sandwich,” she added.

What else?

“You can draw the hotdog,” Ruby told me.

I took the red pen with black ink and I drew a respectable hotdog. I made sure his body – it had to be a he – fit inside his all-encompassing bun. I even added legs. But no arms, cause that would be weird.

Ruby took a look at it.

“No, not like that,” she scrapped my drawing, scribbling over the top of it for emphasis at how *very* wrong it was.

She took my pen to draw it herself.

“There.”

She drew the most adorable hotdog, standing sideways. He had a little cowlick and big eyes. Big eyes? Why didn’t I think of that?! The hotdog’s bun looked more like a comfy cardigan sweater when she finished. The most adorable hotdog-man ever sat there, immortalized on paper.

“How is it that you draw better than I do and you’re only nine?” I asked her.

She shrugged her shoulders, grinning at the praise.

At this point I realized she didn’t need my help with the story, or the the drawing. She created scenes with the sandwich peeking in a window. Hotdog man did get to say, “Hey! I see you!” Which turned out to be my only contribution. I wandered away, putting food in the fridge and doing random clean-up. The story became a mini action-adventure.

Even though I didn’t help much, I’m proud of the one line I added to the story. It fostered a “je ne sais quoi” that nobody else could bring to the saga. Maybe one day she will get one of her graphic novel-type stories published. She could have a whole line of food-based tales. I can say I knew her from the very beginning.